Deco Resurrection

For years, the Chicago Board of Trade Building has been the lord of LaSalle Street -- a chiseled, perfectly proportioned Art Deco skyscraper that dominated the view down Chicago's prime financial artery.

Yet the Board of Trade lost some of its luster in recent years, not only because of competition from sleek new office towers on Wacker Drive but also from self-inflicted wounds that dulled the beauty of its interior.

Now, after a meticulous $20 million restoration, this Roaring '20s skyscraper (which actually was completed in 1930) has come roaring back.

Its Indiana limestone exterior has been repaired and carefully washed. And its interior public spaces have been brought back to their original grandeur, especially the stunning three-story arcade, where new lighting accentuates the jaw-dropping, Jazz Age drama.

Finished a year after the building celebrated its 75th anniversary, the project was directed by Chicago architect Gunny Harboe, whose credits include the exemplary restorations of such Loop landmarks as the Rookery and Reliance Buildings.

Harboe, who recently left Austin AECOM architects and engineers to start his own firm, did the job with his associate Douglas Gilbert and lighting consultants Schuler Shook. The original designers were the celebrated Chicago firm of Holabird & Root.

The Board of Trade thus becomes the latest Art Deco office tower in Chicago to get new life, following Lucien Lagrange's deft conversion of the Carbide and Carbon Building at 230 N. Michigan Ave. into a Hard Rock Hotel and Booth Hansen's equally skillful transformation of the Palmolive Building at 159 E. Walton St. into condominiums.

Style like this never goes out of style.

And it's a joy to have it back.

1. A LASALLE LANDMARK (below)

Holabird & Root's design takes advantage of a special site, which results from a shift in the street grid at LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard and allows the Board of Trade Building to seem as though it is rising right in the middle of LaSalle. The stepped-back, 45-story tower was Chicago's tallest skycraper from 1930 to 1955.

In the restoration, crumbling limestone blocks were taken out and repaired. New steel anchors replaced deteriorated old ones. A water mist was used to loosen and wash the dirt off the facade after tests revealed that it would be gentler on the stone. New bollards and planters eventually will supplant the ugly Jersey barriers put up as a security precaution.

2. LIGHTING THE WAY (below)

Before the restoration, the Board of Trade's Jackson Boulevard lobby was literally a dim version of its former self. Graceless can lights marred the ceiling, one example of how insensitive alterations had dulled the space's Art Deco dazzle.

Today, the lobby shines again. Reproductions of the cross-shaped Art Deco fixtures are back, with extra ones installed to make the lobby bright enough to meet modern standards. The new fixtures draw attention to stylized sheafs of wheat and other decorative flourishes above the main entrance.

3. AN ART DECO MASTERWORK (above)

The most dramatic feature of the Board of Trade's interior, the three-story arcade set just south of the Jackson Boulevard lobby, stops you with its striking fusion of cool Machine Age efficiency and over-the-top Art Deco exuberance.

It's a space, not just a passageway, one that makes the Board of Trade entirely different from the elegant Art Deco street that slices through the old Field Building at 135 S. LaSalle St.

As the architecture critic Edward Keegan suggests in his fine little book about the Board of Trade, the arcade can be interpreted as a miniature version of the cityscape -- its black marble piers suggesting skyscrapers; its lighter cascading marble walls evoking clouds. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature is the sleek illuminated ceiling that wraps down the north- and south-end walls.

Now, like a city whose lights have been turned back on after being knocked out by a summer storm, the arcade's visual power has been fully restored.

Streamlined marble has been cleaned, nickel silver polished and lighting upgraded, including scalloped light sconces that were attached to the black marble piers in the 1940s. As a result, areas that were barely visible before, such as the delicate plaster ceiling, can be fully appreciated. So can the arcade's dazzling spatial complexity and its playfully designed terrazo tile.

4. MAILING IN STYLE (right)

Harboe and his colleagues did some of their most extensive restoration in the east-west corridor that provides an alternate passageway to the north-south route that begins at the Jackson Boulevard lobby.

The architects ditched an old dropped ceiling for a new plaster one, revealing the original nickel silver crown molding in the process. They reproduced original beam-shaped light fixtures and restored the handsome old Art Deco mailboxes, even though they are too small to meet today's needs. (A new mail center has replaced them.)

5. JAZZ AGE FIZZ (right)

Elevator lobbies and doors often get special attention in Art Deco skyscrapers and those at the Board of Trade are no different. Does the decoration on that elevator door represent a stylized sheaf of wheat or a martini glass? Maybe both. As part of the project, new elevator cabs match the historical look of the corridors.

Features such as these obviously are designed to attract tenants. But while it's tempting to say that the improvements are all about money -- this, after all, is the Board of Trade, a center of pure capitalism -- the restoration is also an act of enlightened stewardship, one that marks the resurgence of one of Chicago's great skyscrapers.